Right it Here

School counselor calls
could you come up here right away
daughter
crying in class
can’t do her times tables
with these fears swirling in her 9 year old brain
Fourth graders lined up
she blends in with the others
except for the red puffy eyes
and the dimple on the left like yours
Amid black history month
colorings of MLK and Rosa Parks
it comes like the pangs of 19 hours of labor
your labor with her
for her
You cannot save her and the
cruel
ironyof your efforts
end here
You talk about this day
speak as fast as your head can
find the careless words
But to write it
to record it
to right it
Well thenit becomes your
honest
packaged
under-your-skin
story

Driving Thoughts

I saw a movie where someone said to his lover
I can’t quit you
yeah you know the movie, all the hype
but the quitting you thing
sort of sucked a little molecule
in the left aorta
where I keep the dumb stuff
stuff that seeps into my brain when I’m driving
the shortcut through the park
and that one tree, a magnolia maybe

and the flow of quitting you thoughts
seems to make the damn magnolia
lonely especially
in February when it looks tired
and it wishes for May like I do
because I have to wear a ski cap
and I look manly in them because my hair is so short
but my ears
they’ll fall off if I don’t

and the flow from the aorta
to my brain at the red light
just past the tree
is that
I can’t quit you molecule
and there’s an image of me
standing next to the tree
saying to no one in particular
I can’t quit you
and the tree
even in May
as I say
quit
it looks like February